Superkrewe to roll Uptown this year Friday, January 19, 2007By Bruce Eggler

The New Orleans City Council on Thursday gave up its quest to return the Krewe of Endymion to its traditional Mid-City route this year, acquiescing in Mayor Ray Nagin's decision that the superkrewe should parade Uptown because of a shortage of police officers.

But the council made no bones about where it wants Endymion to roll next year, passing a resolution saying it "strongly endorses" Endymion's return to Mid-City "beginning in the year 2008 and going forward into perpetuity."

Several council members and many Mid-City residents had been trying for the past month to get Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley to reverse their position that Endymion should follow the same route this year as all other east bank parades.

But Nagin and Riley never budged from their position that the hurricane-battered city lacks enough police officers to patrol two parade routes on the same day, and the council's stance was undercut when Endymion Captain Ed Muniz said he had agreed to use the Uptown route this year, provided that the city's largest krewe can return to its old route in 2008.

"All parties recognize Endymion will be on the St. Charles route this season," Councilman Arnie Fielkow said Thursday. But he said the council wanted "to send a message" that things should be different next year.

The vote on the resolution was 6-0, with President Oliver Thomas absent.

Councilwoman Shelley Midura said Riley "has given me his personal commitment" that he will support Endymion's return to Mid-City in 2008.

Jennifer Weishaupt, economic development coordinator for the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization, which led the fight to get Endymion back home this year, said a commitment that the parade will be back in Mid-City in 2008 represents "another sign that New Orleans is recovering" and another reason for displaced New Orleanians to return home.

Weishaupt told the council two weeks ago that before Hurricane Katrina, business at Mid-City bars and restaurants would be as much as 500 percent above normal on the last Saturday before Mardi Gras, when Endymion rolled its huge and elaborate parade through the neighborhood. Without it, she said, what could be the best day of the year for neighborhood businesses would become the worst day of the year.

Endymion traditionally has begun near City Park and rolled along Orleans and North Carrollton avenues before heading downtown on Canal Street. Most other New Orleans parades begin near Napoleon Avenue and head downtown on St. Charles Avenue.

Weishaupt told the council Jan. 4 that negative remarks by Riley and Nagin about conditions in Mid-City have damaged the neighborhood's recovery.

"The Mid-City area, with all of the blight and with the abandoned houses, makes it a lot harder to control what's going on," Riley said in November. Nagin later echoed him, saying it would be too dangerous to let Endymion roll through an area of abandoned homes and buildings.

Weishaupt said crime statistics show that Mid-City is safer now than before Katrina and has less violent crime than some neighborhoods bordering the Uptown parade route.

In other actions Thursday, all by unanimous votes, the council:

-- Agreed to hire the Police Assessment Resource Center, a Los Angeles organization, to "provide the council and administration with expert guidance" on how to establish an Office of the Independent Monitor. The center's contract will be for a maximum of $15,000. The council in December appropriated $200,000 for 2007 to create an independent monitor's office to review investigations into alleged police misconduct. The monitor would not investigate complaints directly but would review the way the Police Department receives and investigates complaints about officers' actions. The idea of such a monitor was first proposed in 2002 by a 21-member police-civilian review task force appointed by then-Mayor Marc Morial.

-- Agreed to pay the Vera Institute of Justice, the parent organization of the Police Assessment Resource Center, as much as $15,000 "to provide the council and administration with an empirically based analysis of Orleans Parish Prison practices that surround arrest, bail and detention" and "information intended to advance innovative areas of reform." Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell said the Vera Institute already has done a lot of work for the council on a pro bono basis.

-- Set the salary of Lary Hesdorffer, director of the Vieux Carre Commission, at $80,000 a year, not counting longevity raises. The salary, which is retroactive to Dec. 3, corrects an error in the package of raises for nearly all city workers that the council approved several weeks ago. Several council members kidded Hesdorffer about the raise, with Hedge-Morrell saying, "If he doesn't perform, we can always come back and rescind it."